After a quick bite at a local Chinese eatery last night, my wife and I went through the common ritual of opening and reading our fortune cookies.  We never got around to eating them, however, because of a lengthy hermeneutic discussion about the enclosed messages.

My wife's cookie held the following thought, or more accurately, political directive:

"You can depend on the trust of the collective."

I'm guessing that this came directly out of Mao's Little Red Book or an instruction manual for the Borg.  Either way, it's the most blatantly ideological fortune I've ever seen.  But even for one unaccustomed to finding propaganda in his food, the meaning was clear...unlike my cookie.

“A kiss?  The renunciation of the heart when one is no longer alone.”

At first glance, it seems profound, but the longer you spend thinking about it, the less sense it makes.  Isn't a kiss (and we're talking romance here, not a peck on the cheek for Grandma) by definition a manifestation of the heart?  And if "one is no longer alone," doesn't that imply a commitment of the heart?

Does it mean that once you've accepted another person in your life, you renounce your romantic emotions toward others?  Is this simply the converse of Woody Allen's famous, "The heart wants what it wants [even if it's my stepdaughter]?"  But that's an awful lot to hang on a kiss which, as we all know, can be sublime and life-changing or as insincere as Bernie Madoff's tax returns.

So I leave it to you, my fellow OS interpretive geniuses - what the hell does this mean?  No prizes, and please, no wagering.